On Sunday, model and Harvard University student Aoki Lee Simmons posted an emotional video on TikTok revealing what it’s like to have an autoimmune disease.
@aokileesimmonsIf your health is tricky or isolating in any way, i love you 💕♬ original sound – Aokileesimmons 🇫🇷🇰🇷🇯🇵
“If your health is tricky or isolating in any way, I love you,” Simmons captioned her video.
Within the first few seconds of her TikTok, Simmons mentions she’s never been one to cry online and then post it, but she felt the conversation could be relatable. Simmons has anemia and an autoimmune condition called Hashimoto’s disease which she says can make her feel “like a weird person.”
“But I’m sure a lot of people can relate,” she said. “Sometimes being in poor or questionable health is so isolating.”
“My grandma calls me a delicate flower. I’m just kind of sick sometimes,” she said. “So I was having a great day. I got up, I went to pilates with my friend. We were hanging out, her other friend came and we were walking around Boston. I just started to get a headache, which happens, and then it just, out of nowhere, we’re in the stationary store, it hit me. I got so dizzy. I had to just drag myself home,” she tearfully explained.
“I had dinner plans,” she said. “I was trying to make sure I saw my friends ’cause I’m graduating and some of them took gap years so they’re still gonna be here and just, I had plans and then I couldn’t get up.”
She continued to explain the symptoms that come with the autoimmune disease and how she canceled the rest of her plans that day. Simmons said she slept from five in the evening to about midnight — around the time she created and posted her TikTok.
“If anyone else is a delicate flower as my grandma would say like it’s so annoying getting to the bottom of it. It’s not like you could say, oh it’s my autoimmune disease or oh it’s anemia, or you just don’t know what it is. It’s not always fixable and sometimes you’re just that person who has to go home,” she said.
“That was like so poorly explained, but if your health is tricky, love you, here for you. Sometimes it sucks when you feel like your friends have, I don’t know, more energy or all that than you. So you know, love you guys.”
Simmons touched many of her followers who also have autoimmune diseases with her sentimental TikTok. Supporters quickly wrote uplifting comments under Simmons’s video while acknowledging the relatable struggles they share.